Sabbath Prohibitions for Biblical Christians?

As part of my continuing meditations on the Sabbath, I would like to consider specifically the ideas of work and kindling of fires, both of which seem to be explicit prohibitions associated with Sabbath keeping.

In the first version of the fourth commandment (Exo. 20:9-10a) God clearly prohibits work, “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work…” Now the word for work in this passage is עָבַד (abad), and in most of its occurrences in the OT refers to constrained service, (i.e. bondage, forced labour, in other words slavery). This is understandable given the context of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt where, after Joseph’s death, the Hebrew people were enslaved by Pharaoh, as recounted in the book of Exodus.

However, according to my understanding, the overriding context informs us that it was not so much freely chosen work that God was prohibiting but rather work that was reckoned necessary by those having to do it, perhaps even for one’s very existence. This labour was oppressive. By this, the Bible has in mind such work as building, service, heavy gardening, farming, etc. which are all forms of work forced on the Hebrews by their Egyptian taskmasters. In many places the Bible describes such work as “ordinary work” (Exo. 12:16; see also Exo. 16:23; Lev. 23:3, 8; Num. 28:18, 25; Jer. 17:27). It was work in and of the world.

So the work God commanded His people to give up on the Sabbath seems to be work that people were forced to engage in to earn a living, pay bills, buy (or grow) food and so on. Such work was deemed an unavoidable aspect of life during the first six days of the week. Nevertheless, such work done on the Sabbath God considered unnecessary and therefore it was a form of slavery, hearkening back to the dark days in Goshen, before God brought the people up to the Promised Land through the leadership of His prophet Moshe (Moses). This is the general context of the fourth commandment. Engaging in such hard labour was an affront to God who had provided His people with freedom from such slavery. To engage in hard physical labour without rest was in effect to go back into Egypt or slavery, thus repudiating God and His gracious provision of freedom.

By contrast, at least as I understand it, the rabbinic tradition prohibits creative work on the Sabbath but that other mundane forms of labour (i.e. ordinary work) are acceptable. I think the reason given is that on the seventh day (i.e. the Sabbath) God rested from His work of creation. However, I’m unable to find this—at least explicitly—in God’s Word. God never gives this as the reason we should rest. Rather, the references in the Bible are to forms of work that create a deficit in our energy levels, and our peace etc. It is a prohibition against work that is not recuperative and restorative but hard and oppressive.

According to rabbinic tradition, there are 39 types of prohibited work, called melachot. The rabbis maintain that the melachot are those activities by which the Tabernacle was built and include farm work of all types and degrees, working with cloth, writing, building of any kind, making and putting out fires, carrying loads and so on; in other words, any activity by which you may alter your environment. But again, to my mind, this seems to be an inference from Scripture, perhaps even a form of eisegesis.

This idea of the melachot is part of the so-called “oral Torah.” This is the tradition of interpretation taught by the scribes and rabbis of Israel. The oral tradition was given written form and codified as the Mishnah in approximately 200 CE by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. The melachot were quite detailed extrapolations of a few simple declarations from the written Torah. It is to such extrapolations that our Lord refers in such places as Mark 7:6-8. (The website Chabad.org has a brief summary of Shabbat laws.)

A specific form of work prohibited on the Sabbath is the kindling of fires, which the Rabbis considered as a melachah, (Exo. 35:3). Today, all over the world, observant Jews go to extremes in order to be obedient to this prohibition, not only refraining from cooking food but even avoiding having to turn on lights or furnaces. In the two occasions of the proclamation of the Sabbath from the moral law, the Ten Commandments, (Exo. 20:8-11 and Deut. 5:12-15) the ban on fires is not mentioned. In fact, the ban on fires is explicit only in Exo. 35:3 (although arguably it may be implied by other verses). Now it’s important to understand the context of Exo. 35:3, which is the fabrication of the Tabernacle and its various components and ceremonial objects such as vessels, bowls, instruments and the like. For many of these things fires would be needed. And not just simple cooking fires either. In order to forge metal into all the ceremonial accessories, silver, gold, and bronze would need to be melted down, or at least made red hot in order to be worked and shaped. It is interesting that in this regard the form of the Hebrew verb “to kindle” is in the Pi’el, which indicates an increased intensity in the action of the verb. In other words, the injunction seems not against simple cooking fires, but rather raging or very hot fires such as would be required for working metals. Fashioning metal parts with such a fire would require a high degree of effort (metal smithing is hard work). Not only that, it would require a lot of work to gather up combustibles, cut firewood (or make charcoal) and so on. All this would be just the kind of activity prohibited as part of the fourth commandment. This is the view of the commentators Jamieson, Fausset and Brown. As well, the Hebrews were at this time subsisting on manna, which they were (presumably) cooking on the day before the Sabbath in compliance with God’s instructions in Exo. 16:23. Since there would have been no need to kindle cooking fires on the Sabbath, there would be no need for God to prohibit them. I also believe that in describing Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Exo. 12:16 lends support to this theory since it indicates that cooking food on the two Sabbaths of the feast was permissible, thus strengthening the view that no prohibition against fires of the everyday sort—as used for lighting and cooking—was ever intended. “On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you.”

Therefore, if I’m correct in my understanding, people who refrain from the use of fire (or other forms of radiant energy for that matter) because they believe it is prohibited by God, are putting themselves through unnecessary hardship. (However, if they voluntarily choose this course of action, that is a matter between them and God.)

In summary, one generalization I think its fair to make is that on the Sabbath, we are to refrain from all kinds of profane activities through separating ourselves from concerns of the world. This, for me, is perhaps the essential reason for Sabbath; it is to acknowledge the “holy” aspect we are able to enjoy as God’s adopted children. In Sabbath, we “redeem the time”, separating the Holy from the profane, coming before God in the realization that our time (and perhaps our space) has become sanctified, made holy by focusing on God, His laws for our blessing, and on His unique Son who died in order that we—through the reconciliation He made possible by His atoning death—may indeed come before the Throne of Grace.

The traditional Jewish Sabbath Havdalah blessing embodies the proper tone for the entire day: “Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d…Who differentiates between the holy and the mundane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day and the six days of work.”

God has set aside—has separated to Himself, not to Jews or Gentiles, (Matt. 12:8)—a full day for our pleasure in Him. God differentiated the Sabbath from the other six days by His will and communicated that to us through His Word, His speech. Through His speech, He revealed to us the need to separate the holy from the profane (Deut. 5:12). Without this act of speech—His fiat—we would never know God’s will concerning the Sabbath, therefore there would be no difference between the Sabbath and any other day of the week. Sabbath is holy because God is holy and He has sanctified this day and told us so in clear and explicit terms through His Word, so that we may fully understand His holiness and to partake of the blessings of that holiness.

Nor does God ask for only one or two hours on a Sunday morning. Rather, He commands us to give up our worldly concerns and activities on the last day of the week—not simply by refraining from those activities, but by spiritualizing them, sanctifying them, giving them back to Him. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1-2).

AMEN

Christ, the Law & the Prophets

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mt 5:17).


The question before us is “How did Christ fulfill the Law and the Prophets?” In other words, how has He fulfilled the Torah? In order to answer that question we must first understand a few terms. Three critical terms are “law”, “prophets” and “fulfill.” The word “abolish” is quite straightforward and consistent in meaning in English and Greek as well as Hebrew. According to Merriam-Webster, it means “to end the observance or effect of.” In other words, it means to do away with something, to annul it, to destroy it and so on.

How then do we define the word law? The word in Greek is nomos. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica nomos is, “‘law,’ or ‘custom’. For the Greeks, law generally was thought to be a human invention arrived at by consensus for the purpose of restricting natural freedoms for the sake of expediency and self-interest.” In Greek culture, the nature of law was principally forensic or legal. Law was largely concerned with human rules devised in order to minimize various kinds of harm that one person may inflict on another. Law was also understood as the grease by which the wheels of commerce within society were able to turn freely. It was a worldly concept and different from the Hebrew concept of “Torah” which—though it nevertheless included a legal aspect—was a more comprehensive term meaning “teachings” or “instruction” as opposed to the more restrictive “rules.”

The ideas expressed by the Greek word nomos and the Hebrew word Torah are dissimilar; while overlapping to a degree, they come out of profoundly different—even opposing—worldviews. Fundamentally, Greek law was a human invention. Torah was a gift from God to Israel. Nomos was worldly, Torah was divine. This leads us to the observation that we should be very careful when we employ these words. They are definitely not interchangeable! We need to be mindful that when Christ says by way of Matthew that He has come to fulfill the Law, He has the Jewish idea of Torah in mind, not the Greek idea of Nomos. Moreover, this is not just hair-splitting. The Bible can only really be understood when seen first through a Hebrew lens, not a Greek. The Bible is essentially the outcome of God expressing Himself in a Hebrew context, even when—in the NT—He uses the Greek language to do so. To misunderstand this is not a matter of indifference.

Next, we have the word “Prophets” by which our Lord was referring to the prophetic, especially Messianic, writings. Luke 24:27 makes this explicit. The OT (Tanakh) consists of three broad categories: the Torah, which is the first five books of Moses (but in general parlance the entire OT), the Nevi’im, which is the collected writings of the prophets, and the Ketuvim, which is the collection of general writings of various genres (primarily history and poetry). So our Lord was saying in our verse from Matthew that He was fulfilling, not doing away with, the writings of at least two of the three sections of Scripture. However, since Biblical culture understood Torah to represent the Scriptures as a whole, He is really implying that He has come to fulfill the entire OT or Tanakh. This fact should cause us no discomfort.

Let’s examine the word fulfill. In the Greek of our verse, the word is pléroó and according to Thayer’s Greek Lexicon means “to cause God's will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be, and God's promises (given through the prophets) to receive fulfillment.” Notice that “fulfillment” does not exclusively mean embodiment or exemplification. Christ does not just embody or exemplify the Torah or the Prophets. He fulfills them by fully accomplishing their conditions and requirements. During His earthly ministry, he did what was written in the complete Torah but also, He did what Israel’s prophets said the Messiah would do. He fulfilled the requirements by being obedient to them.

There are far too many Messianic prophecies to examine, or even list, here. Depending on how you define a messianic prophecy, there could be over three hundred legitimate prophecies fulfilled by our Lord. As well, there are different “levels” of prophecy, some with greater impact than others. Moreover, some prophecies are more explicit while others are less so. Many messianic prophesies happened to Christ in a “passive” sense. That is, He was not actively bringing them about by His words or actions, as is the case with Deut. 18:15-19 or Zech. 11:12. Other prophecies were brought about by His active participation, such as Isa. 53:7 and Zech. 9:9. (Of course, even a passive fulfillment from a human perspective is an active fulfillment from the perspective of the Godhead.)

But since by obeying them He was not thereby annulling either Torah or Prophets, what He was really doing was upholding—that is, defending or witnessing to—their validity and authority. (It is worthy of note that the Bible Society in Israel translates Matt. 5:17 as “Do not think that I have come to nullify the Torah and the Prophets; I have not come to nullify but uphold.” If uphold is in fact the better word—and it’s a big if—the implications for Christians could be profound. For instance, in their preface to The Delitzsch Hebrew Gospels, the translators state that, “The difference between ‘fulfill’ (as it is commonly translated) and ‘uphold’ is immense. ‘Fulfill’ tends to imply doing something to change either the Torah itself or the role that it plays. ‘Uphold’ is the exact opposite: to support and maintain the Torah’s unchanging message and its continued relevance." One could argue this to mean that—at least in some respects—the Torah is still binding on the modern gentile Christian! This is made as plain as can be from the passage concerning the young ruler who approached Christ and asked how he could obtain eternal life. Christ’s answer is very straightforward, “‘If you would enter life, keep the commandments.’ He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and, you shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 19:17b-19). In addition, in verse 21, He drives home the point by saying “If you would be perfect, [Matt. 5:48] go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Instead of relaxing the commandments He actually makes them more stringent (as He had already in His Sermon on the Mount and as Isaiah foretold of Him, Isa. 42:21) with the additional commands for the young man to love his neighbour, to give away all his possessions, and to give up any other attachments in order to follow Christ. He was demanding (not asking for) single-minded devotion. (Christ was certainly aware that the young man kept the commandments imperfectly to say the least. If it could ever have been possible for mortals to keep the law perfectly, Christ’s incarnation and penal death would have been unnecessary. Instead, He shows the young man through the additional requirements that He was miserably unable to keep the Torah according to God’s standard of righteousness and perfection. If he were truly capable of keeping the traditional commandments, he would have had no trouble keeping the additional three.)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ makes it plain through His five “You have heard…” statements (Matt. 5:21, 27, 33, 38, 43) that He is not abrogating or abolishing the law, nor is He illustrating by example that the law is of no further use or is still not required in some way. Indeed, it’s hard not to see that in this sermon Christ supports the Law and Prophets (but not as a means for obtaining salvation, an essential caveat). In these five statements, the Lord builds His hermeneutic upon the solid foundation laid by the Torah, or in other words, He is going deeper into the Torah, teaching that there is more than face value to be discovered.

Furthermore, in Matt. 23: 2-3, Christ makes it plain that He expected His disciples to follow the Law of Moses (i.e. the Torah) and to heed and obey the word of the OT prophets in spite of the fact their efforts would be insufficient. “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, [i.e. having inherited his authority] so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” (The problem with this verse is that it sounds like our Lord is condoning the Pharisaical teachings and only condemning their hypocritical actions or lack thereof. However, I feel certain that this is incorrect. This is made plain in several places such as Matt. 23:13-33 and Mark 7:1-13. Matt. 23:33 is perhaps Christ’s strongest denunciation of these people in the entire NT, leaving His position crystal clear. The Pharisees had so corrupted the Torah—not only its very words, but also its intended purpose—that people were unable to be guided by it as a spiritual tutor. This is reinforced by a version of the Gospel of Matthew that a few scholars such as George Howard and Nehemiah Gordon (not to mention the early church fathers Papius and Clement) believe to be the underlying Hebrew original of Matthew’s account. In that version, Christ does not say, “So do and observe whatever they tell you.” Rather He says, “So do and observe whatever he tells you” the antecedent of “he” being Moses. If this is the case, it is devastating evidence that Christ is upholding and not just completing the Torah.)

Indeed, Christ is clearly teaching here that the Torah and the Prophets are authoritative as a basis for ethical and moral behaviour. However, it might be argued that His words in these verses are to be accepted only contingently since He had not yet fulfilled the Law and the Prophets through His atoning death alone; it being understood by the Church that His atoning death closed or completed the Torah and every prophecy concerning Him. This is implied by most English translations of Matt. 5:17 in their use of the word “until” (Gk. heōs, Strong’s # 2193)) which in itself is a perfectly legitimate translation. However, most translations ignore the small but very important Greek word “an” (Strong’s # 302) following heōs and which is an untranslatable word making the statement following it conditional or contingent. The time that the word until is referring to (“until all is accomplished”) is not the moment of Christ’s death, (which was imminent) as this would leave much still unaccomplished and unfulfilled, including the great tribulation, the second coming, the binding of Satan, the millennial age, Armageddon, and of course the eschatological final judgment, to name a few. It therefore must mean that the Torah and the prophetic writings would remain in place up to the point in history when all things (every single one) are accomplished. We know from Scripture that the ultimate accomplishment or fulfillment will be the Day of the Lord and the Great White Throne judgment at the last when Christ judges the nations, brings in the eternal state, and history ends. We just don’t know when that will occur (Matt. 24:36). This is the contingency implied by the words heōs an. When all things are accomplished, then and only then will the Torah—along with all the rest of Holy Writ—become redundant.

How did Christ uphold the Torah and the Prophets? He did so by maintaining their authority, particularly of the moral law, as well as the authority of the prophets to interpret, explain or mediate the will of God (Deut. 8:3, Matt. 4:4); by teaching doctrine based on Torah; by exemplifying Torah moral values through His perfectly righteous life and by completing the Torah as well as the prophecies concerning Himself through His atoning death, bodily resurrection, and in the future, His second coming and the final judgment.

No one can seriously doubt that Christ upheld the moral Torah (summed up in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments) but what about the civil and ceremonial aspects of Torah? Did He uphold these? I understand that both the civil law and the ceremonial law were actually Israel’s application of the moral code within the context of national life. The moral code was the basis and ultimate justification for all the various requirements of both civil and ceremonial Torah. (By the time of Jesus’ ministry the leaders within Judaism had forgotten this and had simply added a multitude of burdensome regulations not found in Scripture i.e. Matt. 15:8-10; Mark 7:6-8, citing Isaiah and Ezekiel). Therefore, because of this, by upholding the moral Torah, He was also upholding the other aspects of Torah as well. Moreover, we have evidence from such verses as Luke 17:14; Lev. 13:1-2, 6, and 9 that Christ was both very familiar with ceremonial law and had no misgivings about maintaining or upholding it. Matt. 17:24-27 reinforces Jesus’ willingness to support and uphold the requirements of the ceremonial law. In this particular case though, He makes it plain that neither He (as the firstborn son of God, the King) nor His disciples (as adopted sons) were any longer bound by these ceremonial requirements. This is especially so in the case of the sacrificial system which was at the very heart of the ceremonial aspect of the Torah. By being the final offering for sin (Heb. 9:13-14, 22, 25-26 etc.), Christ has paid our debt, God having nailed it to His cross (Col. 2:14).

As far as the civil law is concerned, we have the example of Matt. 22:20-21 to indicate that Christ was not an opponent of civil law and was obedient to it as long as it did not conflict with His spiritual kingdom (John 18:36). And certainly, we have the testimony of Peter and Paul in their epistles maintaining this neutrality with civil authorities.

With this brief survey, my intention has been to demonstrate that Christ not only did not abrogate the Torah (i.e. Law)—He in fact was a staunch supporter of it and made it a requirement for all those who would follow Him. And of course, that means that we too must support and maintain the Torah, since God gave it to the remnant, His people, of which we are now a part (Rom. 9:24-26; 11:17-18; Eph. 2:19 etc.). The ramifications of this conclusion are apt to take many by surprise. A case in point is the question of the Sabbath, which is firmly imbedded in the moral law of God. God has never changed the obligation of righteousness to observe His—not the Jewish—Sabbath or day of rest (Matt. 12:8); it is as binding on us as are the other nine commandments. The problem for the Church however—the dilemma she is in—is that the Sabbath is not Sunday, it is Saturday. If we maintain a rest on the first day of the week instead of the last, we are guilty of disregarding, if not disobeying, the fourth commandment and as James tells us in his epistle, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10).

SOLI DEO GLORIA

On the Fruit of the Spirit

IN THE MORE UNCERTAIN AND TENUOUS DAYS OF OLD, people were never as sure as we seem to be today of finding their way through life. There were fewer safety nets then and it was harder to know when you were on the right course, or doing the right things to guarantee happiness. To be sure, there was no welfare system as we know it today and health care (such as there was) was for the rich. The same was true with education. And in the realm of the spiritual, people were largely in the same predicament. Were they lost? Were they on the right course? How were they to know if they were truly walking in the way of the Lord, on God's pathways, with God's blessings?


The people of Israel had the Torah to help them find their right relationship with God, but even the most devout Jew would, from time to time throughout his or her life, stumble, thereby becoming a law-breaker. The Torah contains 613 commandments, found in the books Exodus through Deuteronomy. These commandments, or laws, told Jews how they were to live their lives and what their attitude toward God should be. But the laws were not exhaustive; they did not cover every single possibility, therefore there was always room for failure. Rather, the laws were models for how to behave and how to believe in general ways. For instance in Leviticus 19, verses 9 and 10, we read, "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyards a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien." If this were a specific injunction, then it would not apply to the farmer who, for instance, grew olives or pomegranates instead of grapes. He would not be beholden to keep the commandment since it would not literally apply to him. Although this was still a model for what God expected, it was external to the actual believer. It was not an internal, self-correcting mechanism for adjusting or monitoring one's walk with God. So the problem was this: "How are we to know when we are keeping God's commandments and walking in His ways as He wants us to do?"

With the coming of the New Covenant, something very radical occurred. Whereas before, God expected people to come to Him in worship and awe, now they were not. With the birth of Jesus, God instead had come to the people! In coming to us, He made obsolete the necessity of the ceremonial and civil aspects of the Torah—and which were the outworking of the Torah’s moral foundation in the corporate life of national Israel. Now doing good deeds, practicing austerities, obeying the laws or any other such thing was no longer binding on the believer (actually they never had been—salvation has always been a matter of grace and faith). For the New Covenant, consummated through the blood sacrifice of Christ, rendered the previous covenant redundant in the sense that Christ—as the goal of the Torah and its laws—fulfilled all its requirements. As is said by the apostle Paul in Romans, "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom. 3:21-22). And further, "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law” (Rom. 3:28).

Jesus himself is our guarantor, for He says categorically "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the Kingdom” (Luke 12:32). And elsewhere He says "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21).Thus, we now understand that God is with us if we but believe and accept. But still, the problem remains, "How are we to know when we are keeping God's commandments and walking in his ways as he wants us to do?" Put differently, "How do we know we are being fruitful; that is to say, how do we know when we are filled with God's holy presence." Jesus Himself says "And I will ask the father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever--the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:16-18).

Jesus is telling us that we need to have the Spirit, His Spirit and the Spirit of God; that is, the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. Paul confirms this for us in Romans, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death…. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you” (Rom. 8:1-2, 8-9).

Let's turn to Paul and hear what he has to say about life by the Spirit. "But I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law…. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16-18, 22-23).

What Paul is telling us is that there is a way to know when you have experienced Rebirth in the Spirit and a way to measure how well you are letting the Spirit work through you. He calls it the "Fruit of the Spirit". Let’s now have a little closer look at this Fruit, to see if we can understand it a little better, and let it work in us with greater impact in our lives and the lives of those around us.

What is fruit? Fruit is, as we all know, the nourishing part of the plant that encases the plant seeds. By making its fruit nourishing and tasty, as well as attractive to the senses, the plant is assured of progeny because the seeds are spread around, sown, if you will, by people and animals after the fruit has been eaten. Thus, fruit is--as it were--a kind of promise of immortality, of the continuance of life, albeit life in a different form. So Paul's use of the word fruit is not accidental or arbitrary, but carefully chosen to convey the very specific ideas of nourishing life and life everlasting.

Another aspect of fruit is that it is an outcome, that is to say, the result of something preceding it. Let's use the example of the grape on the vine. From the seed comes the vine itself and then the branches and finally, on the branches, the fruit. The grape is the result of all that has preceded it. Again, we speak of fruition when we wish to describe the logical and progressive outcome of a set of actions. What Paul is telling us is that once we have the Spirit in us, once we have been reborn in the Spirit, the Spirit will naturally--just as the vine brings forth the grape--bring forth its own kind of fruit in us, for remember, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Therefore, if we have the Spirit in us, we also will have its fruit; that is, we will begin living our lives according to God's will, for He is in us and works through us by way of the Spirit. Paul does not stop here however. He goes on to enumerate the traits or qualities of this fruit growing within us. It is seeing and understanding the very specific qualities that enable us to answer our central question "How are we to know when we are keeping God's commandments and walking in his ways as he wants us to do?" By examining the qualities of our own lives and comparing them with the qualities of the Fruit of the Spirit we are better able to understand how the Spirit can work through us and to see when we are allowing thorns, weeds and briers to grow up around the vine, choking the tender fruit that should be so precious to us.

The first quality that Paul describes is love. Jesus and the apostles understood love in different ways. Eros, Phileo and Agape are Greek words describing the most common ways. Eros is personal, intimate love. It is the human, warm personal love that is so commonly sung about on radio and television. It is the love of passion. It is the love of Valentine’s Day, of sentimental letters and of the broken-hearted.

Phileo is the love that friends and comrades share. It is the love that is expressed by philanthropists and moralists. Both of these forms of love return a reward to the giver in the form of some kind of emotional gratification, even the painful gratification experienced by the spurned lover. Both Eros and Phileo are forms of feeling love. Agape, on the other hand is that impersonal kind of love that finds its fullest expression in the altruistic, the selfless, and the noble. It is the love of doing. In this kind of love, there is no gratification to the giver, no self-serving feel-goods, no emotional kickbacks. It is the quality of love that is completely unconcerned with the self. One of the Lord's best examples of this kind of love is the parable of the Good Samaritan. "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' Now Jesus asked his listener "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him". Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:30-37).

Sometimes Eros and Phileo will rise to such heights--as in the self-sacrifice of parent for child--and then become Agape. Agape is the love God has for us. There is nothing that God needs from us since by His very nature He already has everything. There's nothing in it for Him, yet He gives us His love anyway. This love is about sacrifice, pure and simple. It is about giving absolutely everything to the beloved and for the beloved. It is a no holds barred, no quarter given kind of love. Agape is the love of giving for the sake of giving, helping for the sake of helping, dying for the sake of life in the Other. More than this, it is the oneness that comes when all dualities disappear, when there is no distinction between thee and me. This is the love Jesus spoke of when He said, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love…. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:9-11).

So when we have love, we don't just feel for one another; we do for one another. In this doing, comes a sense of righteousness that we experience as an inner and sublime joy.

Let us understand that by joy we do not mean mere happiness. Here joy refers to self-surrender, the knowledge that overtakes one who is relinquishing her own sense of self and all that goes along with it. Joy depends on love. When we love someone, as the Samaritan loved the injured man by the side of the road, then we experience joy, that sense of the fullness, richness and rightness of one's actions. Experiencing joy is what Christ does and wants us to do. When we are truly walking with Christ, and the work we do becomes an authentic expression of the work of the Holy Spirit in us, we are joyful. But if we are not with God, if we cloud over or allow His light to be denied us so that the Spirit cannot perform His work (Eph. 4:30), then we are truly miserable. And misery is the absence of joy. When we experience misery we know that something has come between our Dear Lord and ourselves and we need to go back to the Well to drink, "'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me…streams of living water will flow from within him'. By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive” (John 7:37-39). This joy then, is not worldly happiness. It is not that feeling we get when "life is good". This joy is the knowledge of our right relationship with Christ; the mutual joy felt by the father and his prodigal son. Who can dismiss this joy: "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate” (Luke 15:20-24). This joy is as natural and sustaining as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat.

Now, when we have love and joy in our lives we become peaceful. And when we are peaceful, we are restful; we experience stillness. And I think this is the thrust of the meaning here. To have peace is to have rest. "By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Gen.2:2). It is when we are truly restful and at peace that we can fully experience any given moment. This is how, I believe, God experiences His creation. In this sense peace, stillness or rest is the positive experience of God in our souls. And there is peace even in our daily activities. For peace does not describe the absence of activity, rather it describes a state of mind, an attitude that is unshakeable because it rests in the unshakeable, "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal” (Isa. 26:3-4).

Stele is the Greek for still or stillness. It means essentially a post in the ground. It is this sense that we have described by Paul. This unshaken firmness gives us equanimity not at the mercy of the ever-changing whims of the world. In this peace, we are able to see things of our world very clearly, just as God saw His own creation clearly, while He rested on the seventh day. In the state of rest or peace, we are not influenced by the glamour of the Deceiver and so are not shaken by calamity or sorrow for we know that in the still clarity of the heart, we see all things just as God intended for us.

The positive expression of this state of inner peace, resting firmly in our love of Christ, is patience. Patience normally means forbearance but here I'd like to push that idea a little farther. I'd like to consider the possibility that here Paul means forgiveness. Patience here is expressed in Paul's words, "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col. 3:13-14). We don't normally think of patience in this way. In the King James Version of the Bible, the word used in place of patience is long-suffering, which I feel gives a more accurate description of what Paul had in mind. Only a long-suffering, forbearing person is able to turn the other cheek, "If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:29-31). So what Paul and Jesus are asking is to go beyond forbearance, to go into forgiveness. This is not easy. We must be aware that too often those who wish to harm or exploit us misread patience as weakness or cowardice. We must take care that we do not allow ourselves to be hurt yet we must seek ways to let the quality of patience transcend mere tolerance of abuse into the transformation of both abused and abuser. To bear one's own abuse by another is to contribute to it and Jesus cannot be asking us to do that. The secret of patience is found in the Golden Rule, treat others as you would like to be treated by others: with respect. But don't misunderstand. Patience by itself is not possible in that it cannot last. It becomes possible and lasting by the experience of love, joy and peace that comes from letting the Spirit of God into your life. When you are infused with the Holy Spirit, it becomes easier to forgive, because it is God's nature to forgive. When you are feeling resentful or vindictive, hurt or abused ask yourself "Am I now, at this moment, in the presence of the Kingdom?" Surely the answer must be, if you are honest with yourself, a resounding "No!" And if you are not in the Kingdom of God, it means you are tottering on the brink of the Abyss. By letting patience into our lives, we are allowing ourselves to forgive. Then and only then will we find the Kingdom.

And this forgiveness can lead us to kindness. Kindness in this case means something like magnanimity or grace. Kindness then is a flow of giving to those who lack, not because they deserve it but because we have it in ourselves to give, in the same way God has it to give us. The receipt of kindness is not earned by the wretched. Are we kind only to those we believe are deserving of it, or do we give it freely? God gives His grace--His kindness--to us freely and abundantly, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:4-10).

This is the grace--or loving-kindness--shown so often by Jesus to the lame, the blind, the deaf and even those who, in our own eyes sometimes, perhaps didn't warrant it, as in the case of the woman caught in adultery or the Canaanite woman who asked Him to heal her daughter. In these cases, Jesus showered his kindness--His grace--upon them, deserving or no. When we have the patience or forgiveness that comes as a natural consequence of the Holy Spirit, kindness--which is our grace--streams naturally out of us and cannot be constrained unless we constrain the very Spirit of God that is in us.

And so we come next to goodness. And what of goodness? I'd like you to consider the first five qualities of the fruit of the spirit--love, joy, peace, patience and kindness--as outwardly directed, that is, directed toward others, with goodness as their perfect summation and conclusion. These qualities then, stream out from the Spirit of God within for the benefit, succour and relief of outward creation, which is creation apart from us, other than ourselves. And goodness is the crowning glory of them all. In goodness, the other five qualities are joined in perfect balance and proportion so that to be good is to be loving, joyful, peaceful, forgiving and kind. In the end, only God is truly good and to be truly good is to be godly. Here Paul is telling us that the five qualities gathered and expressed together lead one to be good. Good to whom? Good to others. But what of yourself? Are you not part of the equation? If the fruit of the Spirit is only for others, how then are you to grow in God's love and goodness and become better in His sight? How does the Spirit affect you? What does the Spirit do for you?

The final three qualities of the Fruit of the Spirit are for your righteousness and goodness. They are God's gifts just for us, for our own quality of life. With faith, gentleness and self-control we see how the Spirit affects us most personally and intimately.

Faithfulness can be considered as the loyal adherence to the object of one's faith. I think Paul has two objects in mind here. One is God, specifically the Holy Spirit. He wants us to adhere or cling to the Spirit in spite of the vicissitudes of the world. He wants us to give our undeviating allegiance to God because only God is worthy of such an allegiance. One early biblical example of this faith was Abraham who was so faithful to God that he was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar. Job is another example. Job was severely tested. Yet, in the end, his faith in the ultimate goodness of God sustained him through all his trials. It is through faith that we are given the assurance that suffering will end as well as the poise, strength and equanimity to endure until it does. And this leads us to the second object of faith. When we truly have faith in God and his innate goodness, we become faithful to ourselves for through faith in God, become worthy in His sight. We are worthy, not because we deserve it or are qualified for it. We are worthy for one reason alone. We are worthy because God loves us. His love makes us worthy to ourselves and it is that worthiness of oneself that Paul describes here as faithfulness. When we are worthy, we have a reason to have faith and obtain it through grace. It is not something we have to work for but simply accept. This faithfulness is our own authenticity. It is our integrity in spite of all the trials we may have to endure. It tells us about us and how we are to react to the trials and joys that life in the world sends our way. In faithfulness we are more able to be calm, unshakeable and honest--with ourselves and with others. It is this calm certitude we have when we are able to live as Jesus describes in the parable of the house built on rock, "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matt. 7:24-27).

Through faithfulness in ourselves as instruments of the holy will we become gentle. For what need is there to be anything but gentle, not only with others but with ourselves especially. Gentleness with ourselves results in knowing that nothing good can be forced. Since it is God's good pleasure to give us the Kingdom, nothing we do can make any lasting difference, nor alter His will for us. When we know this, we are able to be gentle with ourselves and consequently life becomes less of a struggle and more of a journey. The only thing remaining to us then is to get closer to God; to align ourselves as closely and intimately as we can with Him. This truly is the blossoming of the interior life and the riches of God's kingdom will be available to us every moment of every day. And when we are able to be gentle with ourselves, self-control becomes easy and effortless because self-control is transmuted into God-control.

When most of us think of self-control we are flooded with impressions and images of struggle and effort. And so long as the self instead of the Spirit governs us, it will indeed be a constant struggle. But imagine one who has undergone Rebirth in the Spirit. She has gradually let the Spirit of God blossom within her as the mustard seed in the farmer's field; she has let the leaven of the Holy Spirit transform her very substance so that even the very molecules of her body have become holy. Is it conceivable that one such as she could ever struggle with the temptations and turmoil of the World? Would she have to fight, to struggle? No more. To the degree that she has experienced a true conversion, life's temptations will become easier to understand and to overcome.

We struggle a hundred times a day with issues of self-control. Should I have that last pastry? I'm attracted to my secretary, but I'm married. What am I to do? Can't I have just one more drink, please? The answers will become easy only when the questions become unimportant. Hopefully by now we can see that these and many more such questions are answered automatically when, and only when, we have experienced genuine Rebirth in the Spirit. For the Spirit Himself will not only open our eyes and lead us into the Light, but the Spirit is that very Light by which we see.

Our question, that was before impossible to answer, with life by the Spirit becomes impossible to ask. Paul's words are affirming as well as comforting "There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus."

Why Do Christians Worship on Sunday?

Christians of numerous denominations consider Sunday as their day of rest and worship. Many, out of reverence for it, name Sunday the “Lord’s Day.” By such confession, they openly acknowledge that Christ owns the day—He has made it His own. This is a foundational belief of almost all Christians the world over. In fact, most Christians consider a deviation from it almost heretical. In this Christians have accepted unchallenged the reasons for Sunday rest and worship given by the Church, believing that the resulting practice is a mark of faith, piety and obedience. Notwithstanding, are the reasons for Sunday rest and worship in fact true and legitimate? Do they explain not only why Christians are to rest and worship on Sunday but also act together as an implied command to do so?

In chapter 67 of his work, First Apology, the early church father Justin Martyr (100-165 CE) provided two reasons to explain and justify Sunday as the Christian day of rest and worship. The early Church wholeheartedly adopted Justin’s explanations and has since incorporated them into her official catechisms and statements of faith (e.g. the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the London Baptist Confession of Faith and others). But even though by Justin’s day, many—if not all—Christians were accepting the practice of Sunday rest and worship—as we learn from early church documents like the Didache—Justin, one of the first Christian apologists, merely provided an explanation or justification; he did not invent the practice.

Now the first reason given by Justin for Sunday as the Christian day of rest and worship is that “it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world” (italics added). The second reason given by him is that “Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day [Sunday] rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things.” Both of these explanations appear legitimate and for a Christian to doubt their validity would seem more a result of an underlying apostasy! But wait a minute. What has God to say about these reasons?

As to the first, we must ask, “Where in the Bible does God announce this?” Where does God command us to worship and rest giving His beginning act of creation (Gen. 1:1-5) as the reason or justification? And we answer, “Nowhere.”  Well then, what does God actually say about resting and worshipping? “So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Gen. 2:3, italics added).

Rather than saying that the beginning of creation on Day One is the reason Christians should rest and worship, God in fact makes it plain that Christians should rest and celebrate through worship because after He had finished and completed His work of creation, He rested and celebrated. (In Gen. 1:31, God “celebrates” His own handiwork by acknowledging and proclaiming its goodness). The Bible makes it plain that it is because of the end and completion of creation that God commands commemoration and this accordingly on the last or seventh day of the week, the Sabbath, not the first, Sunday. For Justin to give any other reason for this is—speaking generously—to spin the Word of God.

And as far as the teaching that a second reason is in consequence of the resurrection, again, where is this found in the Bible? And again we answer, “Nowhere.” It sounds pious and holy to say such a thing but this is exactly how Satan operates in the world—by twisting, perverting and corrupting our understanding of the Word, using our own ignorance, envy and pride to “lead astray, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24). Rather, we are to remember that God’s essential act of redemption and reconciliation was deliverance of His people from slavery, first (typically) out of Egypt (Deut. 5:15) and consequently out of the world of sin (Rom. 6:22). This deliverance from the old fetters of sin into the new fetters of righteousness (Eph. 3:1) is the essential reason for Christ’s foretold life and sacrificial death (Gen. 3:15). In the sense that Christ has delivered all God’s people, the true Ekklesia, from the curse of death, this deliverance through Christ leads us to abide in Him through devotional gratefulness and the certain trust that removes every shred of doubt and fear. In other words, Christ has given us rest through the cross. By Christ’s death—not His resurrection—God removed our record of debt that stood against us, by nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:4). This is the second reason provided by God in His Word.

Nevertheless, is not the resurrection important? It is, of course, but not as a reason to rest and worship. One must ask why then was Christ resurrected? What purpose or function does it serve? Well, it stands as the final guarantee of the truth of the Gospel.  It vindicates Christ and gives us surety. Because of the validation it gives to Christ and His euangelion, we have an eternal hope (Heb. 6:19; 10:23; 1 Peter 1:3). However, there is another—not well understood—reason why the resurrection is important and necessary and it has nothing to do with that given by Justin. Very briefly, the resurrection occurred so that Christ could present Himself as the “first fruits” of a redeemed humanity. Even as the first fruits of the barley harvest were being dedicated to God through the “wave offering” by the priests in the Temple, so too did Christ—the fulfillment of the OT “law and the prophets”—offer Himself to God as a kind of wave offering at the celebration of the Feast of First Fruits which occurred on the first day of the week, Sunday.

But Justin further maintains in his Apology that, “on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things [i.e. the reasons given above].” But where in the Bible does Christ teach these things? The answer, as you’ve probably guessed already, is “Nowhere.” 

It is apparent from his context that Justin is referring to Christ’s post resurrection appearances to the disciples, the first being on Sunday evening—which means parenthetically that this appearance occurred very likely on Monday, since evening for the Jews was the beginning of a new day. (John 20:19-20). Although He had opportunity, there is absolutely no indication in John that Jesus gave the disciples any reason to change the Sabbath. (This is not an argument from silence.) It is also true of the other appearances recorded in John (20:26-27; 21:4-6, 15-19). Likewise, as far as the Synoptic gospels are concerned, the same holds. In fact, we find the golden opportunity for Christ to teach what Justin claims for Him, in Luke’s account of one of Jesus’ final appearances (24:13ff) where Lord teaches two disciples He has met on the road to Emmaus. In the episode, Christ refers to the teachings of the OT prophets, “beginning with Moses” (who brought the Ten Commandments to God’s people at Sinai!) and how it was necessary to “suffer these things” (Isaiah 53; Psalm 22) in order to fulfill (i.e. teleos, the goal or purpose) God’s will. Among His final words given by the pen of Luke via the Holy Spirit, Christ says “that everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled, then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:44-45).

We see from the these accounts that Christ was teaching some final lessons (from the OT!) to His disciples before His ascension, but again, nowhere in these final moments does He teach what Justin claims. If He had in fact taught them, it would only prove that His teaching was false and contrary to the Word of God. He could then be justifiably accused of dividing His own kingdom (Matt. 12:25).

The bottom line is that Christians have been sold a bill of goods, and this probably not by accident, given the anti-Semitic stance of the early Church. The Church’s reasons for resting and worshipping on Sunday are in fact unbiblical; they are not part of God’s purpose or intention and might even be understood as a form of idolatry. “In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:7). In accepting the justifications for Sunday rest and worship given by men like Justin, Christians “leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (Mark 7:8). If we are truly obedient to the Lord (John 14:15) and desire to honour our relationship with Him through rest and worship, shouldn’t we at least do it for the reasons God Himself considers important?

SOLI DEO GLORIA

If you have found this post challenging or rewarding, read this related essay on the importance of the Sabbath for the true disciple of Christ.

The Four “Levels” of Biblical Interpretation

It is of vital importance to understand that the Bible needs to be interpreted; it cannot be understood if read according to face value alone.

In our context, to interpret means to explain and elucidate the meaning of a text; to construe the significance of a text. The word derives from the Latin interpres, a negotiator, that is, one who is able to find the resolution (or truth?) of a matter. This is of fundamental importance in understanding the Bible. If one takes the historical-grammatical approach—literalism in other words—as do the Dispensationalists, (or so they claim) one will never fully understand the Bible. This is why we need both the witness of the Ekklesia, which is the historical Church, and more importantly the illumination of the Holy Spirit in order to fully comprehend the true and intended meaning of Scripture. This is not to deny that most of Scripture is plain and clear—of course it is. It is rather simply to acknowledge the same truth as that mentioned by Peter, “There are some things in them [Paul’s letters, i.e. NT scripture] that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16, italics added. See also Heb. 5:11). Nor is this to deny Sola Scriptura. We are not adding to or changing God’s Word by interpreting His meaning, otherwise the Holy Spirit would be a liar!

In this specific regard I believe that tradition, both Jewish and Christian, has much to teach us. And according to this tradition, there are actually four “levels” of Biblical interpretation. According to the post-apostolic church fathers as well as the Rabbis of Judaism, there are four potential levels of meaning for any given passage. The four levels are:

Simple (literal, plain, ordinary, obvious) At this level, the Bible uses words in the ordinary, everyday sense. We read for example in 2 Kings 6:1, “Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, ‘See, the place where we dwell under your charge is too small for us.’” In other words their quarters were too cramped. A huge portion of Scripture is this simple and straightforward. And no passage of Scripture loses the basic, simple meaning. If we eliminate this level, we are then interpreting Scripture according to our own biases and assumptions. The plain and simple meaning provides the context of the passage. Without context, our interpretation is cast adrift and we will often end up creating our own meaning instead of discovering the underlying revelation. This is the level known by Biblical scholars as the grammatical-historical. It is important to recognize that the grammatical-historical method of interpretation recognizes different kinds of language including the figurative, the symbolic and the allegorical. This level does not mean the commonly understood notion of literalness.

Hinted (oblique, secondary, implied) The next level includes more meaning, but often the meaning is not obvious. Nevertheless, the meaning of a hinted passage is based firmly on the simple and is empirical and experiential. We see this throughout Proverbs, as in 20:10, “Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the LORD.” The simple meaning is a straightforward declaration for merchants to be honest in their economic activities because God hates dishonesty. But the hinted meaning implies that in all our dealings in life, we should be fair and honest, not just in economic transactions.

Comparative or conceptual (allegorical, symbolic, abstract)
The dictum “Scripture interprets Scripture” becomes important at this level. Here, one passage of Scripture is compared with one or more others in order to obtain clarification or elucidation of meaning or to see how the original meaning has been expanded or augmented. It now also becomes important to remember that one cannot justify a novel interpretation at this level by ignoring the meaning and context of the simple level. The simple level is never irrelevant; it is always applicable as the beginning of the interpretive process. To understand the Bible, one begins at the simple level, always. The conceptual or comparative level is the allegorical level. Allegory is defined as a statement of abstract ideas or principles through the use of representational language. It is symbolic in that one or more things including people, objects, places, actions, and events represents or stands in for another. A prime example of this is found in Exo. 12:5ff where the lamb takes the place of God’s people (v. 13). Another (related) example is the re-enactment of the Passover Seder in the rite of the Lord’s Table, (Mark 14:22-24, Matt. 26:26-28 and pars.) where the bread and wine are symbols of Christ’s body and blood. In fact, these instances are good examples in that not only is each symbolically self-contained, that is, the symbolism embedded within the passage explains the deeper significance of that particular passage but as well the first passage helps to explain why the second is so important. The second passage from the NT is a kind of unfolding of the first. In theological terms, the OT passage is a “type” of which the second is the “antitype” or fulfillment. It is a case of scripture interpreting scripture. However, this level is also dangerous because it is so tempting to fallen human nature to “invent” meaning in a passage that simply does not apply. We want the Bible to teach what we think it should. Beware!

The Mystical or Spiritual level

In our examples from Mark and Matthew, the physical elements described really existed. At the Passover Seder—that He would fulfill in the celebration of Lord’s Supper or Communion—Christ broke real bread and poured real wine, the simple level. However, these actions (and their elements), because tied ritualistically with the Jewish Passover, were also suggesting a deeper significance, the hinted or implied level. But the bread was also symbolic of His body and the wine of His blood, hence the conceptual, comparative, allegorical, or symbolic level. More than this, the broken bread of His body and poured wine of His blood were pointing to Christ’s atoning death in order to fulfill Scripture, thereby reconciling His elect (i.e. the true remnant spoken of by Jeremiah in 31:7 and 50:20). This is the mystical level. At this level, our minds and hearts are illuminated by God’s Holy Spirit—the Ruach ha’ Kodesh or Ruach Elohim—and are enabled to gain a glimpse of God’s ultimate plan of redemption embedded within His sovereign (and consequently hidden) will. Without the fourth and ultimate level of interpretation, revealed by the ministry of the Holy Spirit (who guides us into all—that is, ultimate—truth), we will be like those chained to a wall in Plato’s famous cave who are able to see only passing shadows of things as they move across the opposite wall, and not the things in themselves (The Republic).

While interpretation at the simple and hinted levels is available to any reasonably intelligent person willing to make the effort to investigate and understand, such is often not the case at the symbolic or allegorical level. And at the Spiritual or Mystical level, we are entirely dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit to illumine us with the reality of which all others are but passing shadows (John 3:8). But again, this level of interpretation will in no way do violence to the previous levels. It is not a case of one level being true—or truer—than any other is. All levels are true in their context, one building upon the other. If the Spiritual or Mystical level is true, it is axiomatic that the Simple and Hinted levels are also true, else God would be doing violence to and causing confusion by His own Word—an impossibility!

SOLI DEO GLORIA

Book Review: Decision Making and the Will of God

Friesen G. and Maxson R.
25th Anniversary Edition
Multnomah, Colorado Springs, 2004
ISBN 1-59052-205-2

(This is a shorter version of a longer article from October 2008.)

The main thrust of this book is that the traditional view of God’s will for individuals—that God has a discoverable or knowable personal will for the individual believer, and perhaps cohesive groups of believers with a common problem or situation—is unbiblical and therefore false. Specifically, it is the discoverable or knowable personal will for individuals for the purpose of decision making to which the authors object. Their main point being that such a will does not exist and that in God’s moral will as revealed by Scripture is everything that a believer needs to know (Deut 29:29) and must know to live a fruitful and blessed life as a Christian. And since there is no personal will of God for the individual, searching for God’s personal will through circumstances “open/closed doors” as well as other believers, the leading of the Holy Spirit, impressions and so on is futile and can only be periodically successful at best.

Rather, their approach is to explain what they call the "way of wisdom" which they contend is in fact the true traditional approach to Christian decision making. They contend that this way of wisdom is composed of four principles, to wit:

1. Where God commands, we must obey;
2. Where there is no command, God gives us freedom (and responsibility) to choose;
3. Where there is no command, God gives us wisdom to choose;
4. When we have chosen what is moral and wise, we must trust the sovereign God to work out all the details together for good.

As well, the authors are quick to point out that divine, supernatural intervention should be considered the exception, not the norm and examples found in the Bible of such intervention should be understood in the light of very specific needs or of a very specific and purposeful working out of God’s sovereign will for His redemptive purposes. Thankfully, the author’s insistence on a complete lack of at least some degree of (apparent?) divine intervention in a person’s life has been moderated somewhat in the 25th edition, the authors acknowledging its possibility if not its ubiquity. (I believe that what a Christian often understands as God's personal will for him or her is really a demonstration of God's providential but sovereign will. It is not something that happens contigently but is an aspect of God's sovereign will in which the believer is the recipient. In this regard, placing ourselves in the midst of God's moral law—which is the expression of God's moral will—also ensures the outcomes of God's usually hidden sovereign will. But perhaps I'm just splitting hairs.)

I liked this book. I think it is a very intelligent examination of the whole “God’s will” issue in light of the objective examination of Scripture. I believe that the personal will of God for an individual (or for cohesive groups such as congregations and their leaders) is a chimera as a strategy for decision making, and should not be pursued. The personal will we are seeking, is nothing more or less than God’s sovereign will for the individual, which is only knowable after the fact. By placing ourselves squarely in the middle of God’s revealed, moral will, we can be assured of being pleasing to God, regardless of our circumstances or their outcomes.

The authors’ view also has implications for Christian liberty, as may be expected. If we are firmly planted in God’s will through our understanding and obedience to the demands of Scripture alone, we will find that—rather than having less freedom—we will in fact have much more freedom.

The book is well researched and well documented with clear and cogent arguments for the position being put forward by the authors. This is a book that should be read by every Christian.

Some thoughts on the Headcovering in Worship

The Preamble

1. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
Paul tells the recipients of his letter to follow him in his way of life as a Christian, just as Paul follows Christ. This and the next verse set the context for the entire chapter, not just this passage. We are to interpret everything that comes after in light of these two verses.

2. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.

Paul here praises the Corinthians for being mindful of him and for keeping the teachings and practices he has given them through his apostolic authority within the Ekklesia (Church). These two verses are in keeping with instructions of his as in 1 Cor. 4:17; 7:17 and 2 Tim. 1:13-14 for example. All these verses show approval and encouragement for obedience. He wants all the congregations—regardless of their specific circumstances—to carry out His instructions to the best of their sanctified understanding and obedience. While all of Paul’s letters have specific recipients in mind, they are also meant for the Ekklesia in general. That is, Paul’s teachings are intended for and are applicable to all congregations within the greater Ekklesia or Assembly (i.e. the Church).  The teaching that begins with verse three is no exception to this rule (but see our concluding remarks below).

The Argument

3. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

This is the key verse of this passage and sets up the structure underlying the entire discussion. God (the Father) is the head of Christ; Christ is obedient and submissive to God the Father, always perfectly doing His will. Christ is the head of the man; He is the Saviour and Lord. The man is the head of his wife. Since it is the role of the head to be the one who determines the nature of a relationship, it follows that the husband as head of the family and of the wife must exemplify and model this covenantal form of relationship.

4. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head,
Because Christ is the head of the man, for a man to cover his head is symbolically to dishonour Christ through concealing His glory. (Jewish and pagan men alike before and during the Christian era often wore a covering on their heads during worship. The coverings were not a simple hat that sat on top of the head, such as the kippah (skullcap). The covering was probably the tallit (prayer shawl). Paul is saying that during private prayers it was permissible to pull the tallit up over the head, but not so during public prayers or worship.

5. but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven.
She does this by symbolically announcing, through her uncovered head during public worship, that she is no longer of one flesh with her husband, that is, no longer in the covenantal form of relationship that Paul has already defined in verse three and which is based on such passages as Genesis 2:23-24. When this happens, not only is her husband dishonoured but so also is the institution of biblical, covenantal marriage. The intention is to conform to the biblical principle outlined in verse three. The rest of the passage is really just an unpacking—in terms of the accepted customs of the day—of the relationship already outlined in verse three.

6. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.
Paul shows the circuitousness of the situation: if she is uncovered, she may as well be shaven, which in the context of the society in which they all lived at the time of writing, was a sign of disgrace. Generally speaking, only “loose” women or prostitutes went around in public with their heads uncovered. By this practice, the woman was “marketing” her availability. (The Greek word for covering in this verse, katakaluptomai, implies that her hair, not a garment, should cover her.)

7. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.
This is a summary verse, restating the argument so far. The way for woman to show forth her proper relationship to the man is the opposite of how a man should show his proper relationship to Christ. In the context of their day, a woman’s hair was her glory and to not cover it up would put her in the position of publicly saying, “My glory is just the same as my husband’s glory.” This would detract from the proper covenantal relationship established at creation (outlined in verse three). This practice is no longer the accepted custom of our own time and society but I believe the principle or pattern of moral rectitude, of which the head covering is a specific example, is still relevant.

8. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
To authenticate his thesis, Paul gives the order of precedence according to scripture: the woman came from the man (Genesis 2:22) and is therefore related to man in a subordinate positional role just as Christ proceeds from the Father and is related to Him in a subordinate positional role.

9. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
Here Paul reminds his readers of the purpose of the creation of woman (Genesis 2:18, 22) that she is to be to him a helpmate and fit companion. This logical statement adds the weight of further evidence to Paul’s argument by clarifying that what is of most importance is the proper relationship between men and women generally, and a man and his wife particularly, and all to Christ.

10. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
It is for this reason (the two parts of which are given in verses eight and nine) that the wife owes honour to the man (because of his positional authority, as per verse three) regardless of what kind of man he may be in and of himself. And too, it honours angels who are partakers, in some mysterious way, of the true worship of God. I believe that whenever God’s people are gathered together for true, biblical worship, angels are gathered to watch and listen (and perhaps enjoy and offer praise to God for the glory He receives from His supreme creation, human beings).

11. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman;

Here Paul reminds husbands and wives not to be independent. It is not for ourselves that we engage in the ordinances Paul has been talking about. We do not have ultimate authority in this. Men and women are equal and have the same worth (Genesis 1:27-28a). Here Paul tells us it is not a question of which is better or innately superior: husband or wife. We are both to be in obedience to God’s commandments. Both the husband and the wife are dependent on God and His ordinances. This is the core of the covenantal relationship and this is the (universally operative) principle within the Ekklesia. This principle is symbolically represented here by the custom of the head covering.

12. for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.
Since woman comes from man, owing her existence partly to him (Adam provided the raw material as it were) and since all men since the Fall are born from (and nurtured by) women, so men and women are mutually dependant and of equal worth. We are to be mindful that men and women (and therefore husbands and wives) have equal value, but that God has supreme value over all His created order and so has a right to make demands upon it. All things come from God as Creator and owe allegiance to Him.

13. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered?
In this verse, Paul confidently asks his readers to use their common sense as well as their status as born-again Christians to discern the truth in their hearts and minds and to apply what he has told them to their own situation in the society of which they were members.

14. Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him,
Paul introduces the argument from nature here but he seems to have something of an unspoken assumption in mind. I think by “nature” he really means the world of human social customs, prohibitions, mores and the like, not the world of the forces and processes that produce and control all the phenomena of the material world. Clearly, if that is what Paul meant he would be seriously mistaken as the material world of nature teaches no such thing. It was not the custom of most Jews, before and during the Christian era, to wear long hair as we see so often depicted in popular art and film. Jewish men at the time wore short hair. The main reason being that long hair in a man of Paul’s time and place was a sign of effeminacy and (probably) homosexuality. In Paul’s mind, homosexuality was a perversion of the proper order of nature and this created social stigma. In this sense Paul can say that nature teaches that long hair on a man is a disgrace.

15. but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
The word for covering used here, (Gk.  peribolaion) indicates, tangentially, being covered by fabric or a garment that could be wrapped about oneself, such as a veil or shawl. This indicates that a woman’s hair acts as a kind of veil or shawl. The word “for” (GK. hoti) means “because of” or “because.” So Paul is saying in effect “A woman’s glory is because of her hair (her natural covering).”

In any event, showing off her long (glorious) hair in the society of which she and her husband were members was tantamount to a denial of the sanctified relationship between man and wife established by God in the Garden of Eden at the very beginnings of our world. The ordinance of the head covering for both men and women was a social recognition of the covenant nature of marriage and of submission to the purpose and wisdom of God by husband and wife, man and woman.

Conclusions

16. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.

If any man appears to be, or is accounted as, willing to engage in strife or argumentation, Paul says that (in his time and place, i.e. first century Palestine) there is no other habit, ordinance, custom or practice than the uncovering of the man’s head and the covering of the woman’s head during public, corporate worship.

The NET Bible translates the word “contentious” as “quarrel”, thus reading, “If anyone intends to quarrel about this (practice of the head covering)….” It could also be understood as “If anyone has a problem with this practice, too bad. This is the only practice (or custom, tradition, teaching) we have, none of the other congregations have a practice which is any different.”

I believe the word “such” (Gk.  toioutos) should be translated as meaning “this is the only custom we have” and I conclude that this (the covering of the head) was the custom (Gk. sunetheia) of other congregations besides the Corinthian.

In line with this, it behooves us to be cognizant of the overall Pauline context in all his writings. Three variants in particular stand out; the authority of Christ, the obedience, respect, and submissive attitude that wives are to display toward husbands, and Paul’s clear instructions for strong and assured believers to give way to the needs, beliefs and practices of weaker Christians, as is found in passages such as Rom. 14 and 1 Cor. 8. And in light of Paul’s admonishing of Christians not to turn back to the law and legalism (as for instance in Gal. 3) we perhaps may understand that each Christian married couple has a degree of liberty in regard to such issues as the head covering, so long as they recognize the creation order of first man, then woman and so act accordingly (that is to say men with respectful consideration and women with willing submission).

After considering this passage, and the greater context of Paul’s ministry as well as the underlying OT context, I’m inclined to think that Paul is recommending that husbands and wives follow local custom for the sake of order, expediency, peace and unity (in keeping with Paul’s overall concern for decency and propriety in the Assembly) and that if anyone chooses to practice something different, it is their own business so long as it doesn’t cause strife within the local body of believers.

My own, personal belief is that if the husband sincerely believes his wife should wear a covering (a shawl, mantle, veil) in keeping with first-century NT custom, then as a decent Christian wife, she should respectfully submit, regardless of her personal preferences. I do not wish, however, to give the impression that this issue is black and white, but that a mutual decision should be reached after both husband and wife have offered the matter up in prayer, asking for guidance and blessing.  As I have said, this is open to Christian liberty; it is not a practice of NT law. That would be sheer legalism, the very thing Paul is quick to warn against in many places.

Personally, I can think of no better gesture of voluntary, loving submission to Christ than for a woman to wear a covering such as a veil or shawl during public worship. (I know that if Paul had said that it is seemly for a man to cover his head with a prayer shawl during public worship, I would do it as an act of grateful submission to the will of God, regardless of what any person within the Assembly thought about my actions.

For a woman to cover her head is a beautiful act of graceful obedience and a very public announcement that she belongs to Christ—heart and soul—and is neither afraid or ashamed of the Gospel. However, done in any other attitude but loving submission, as an act of spiritual service (Rom. 12:1) or for any reasons not in keeping with the overall teachings of joy and peace in Christ, then it is done in pride, defiance and disobedience and would be best if not done at all. We must each search our hearts and arrive at a solution that is honourable and edifying for all parties in the particular context in which it takes place. This always requires sensitivity and sometimes even sacrifice on the part of the husband or the wife.  If we come to the Lord in prayer, and there find even a hint of guilt or shame because of our decision and action, then we must repent, seek forgiveness and alter our behaviours accordingly.